Politics & Government

Update: Cold War Still Simmers in Santee

An interesting email exchange between Mayor Randy Voepel and a resident of China.

Updated May 31 @ 3:20 p.m.

When you get an email from an African prince who wants to share the wealth or a Chinese person asking for your autograph, I bet you tend to ignore them. Santee's answers back with the chutzpah of a Vietnam veteran.

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This recent email exchange between Mayor Voepel and someone claiming to live in China, who seems to collect autographs of U.S. Mayors, is an insight into the range of email the Mayor recieves and his "pull-no-punches" attitude in responding to them.

Dear Mayor:

As a great city/county of the United States, your city/county must be playing an important role to make the U.S. a prosperous county.

Your city/county has charitable conventions compared to other states, which I have seen in many TV programs. You city/county is attractive economically and democratically, these can’t not be achieved without your governance, which I am very interested in.

I’d like to have a signed photo of yours and the seal of your city/county, so I can keep them as souvenirs, can you help me?

Wish you the best

Sincerely yours

Deng zhi yong

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Reply from Mayor Randy Voepel:

Dear Mr. Yong,

I respectfully decline to cooperate in any way with what I consider to be an enemy of the United States. The People's Republic of China is a repressive and evil communist regime that runs a Police State. I fought in Vietnam to stop communism and will fight communism until the day I die. Please accept me as a very determined enemy, as I assume you to be to me.

Best Capitalist regards,

Randy Voepel Mayor, The freedom and human rights City of Santee

The day after first publishing this piece, Mayor Voepel sent this reply with a bit of back-story, to a fellow Vietnam Veteran who did not agree with his reaction:

There is more to this reaction of mine than what you might know. I have a running battle with the Chi-Coms, that has been going on since my first week in office as the Mayor, twelve years ago. The Chinese Consulate sent me a very intimidating letter in 2001 asking me to officially denounce a Chinese meditation group called the Falun Gong / Falun Daffa.

I wrote a very scathing reply about protecting human rights and not persecuting sub groups. Of course that reply went viral in the media at the time. 

Do some research on this, the Chinese Communist Government puts these people into work camps and many just disappear. I personally oppose EVERYTHING the Communist Chinese do or stand for. They are evil and would be very happy (along with Iran, North Korea, al-Qaeda and a long list of others) to see the USA collapse. I am a warrior at heart and will not hesitate to strongly defend our Country against Communism. I will always react strongly to anything that comes out of China.

Whenever the United States goes to war, it is always people like me (the warrior types) that are called on. As long as the people of Santee elect me (78 percent of the vote last time) as their Mayor, I will defend this City against all threats, even silly email requests supposedly from Communist China.

As far as Chinese goods go, I try to the best of my ability to buy USA and allied products, although that is difficult to do as we all know. As far as being a laughing stock on blogs and web sites, I don't care one whit what happens on the web, what is important is taking the right stand to protect what America STANDS FOR.

Come on down to the and see what my buddies and shipmates think about the communists.

Respectfully (with the exception of Communist Chinese),

Randy Voepel Mayor, the freedom loving City of Santee

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